In honor of Women’s Herstory Month, the first edition will cover female professional football leagues – then and now.
There are a surprisingly high number of female professional football leagues running today. We will be bringing awareness to three large national leagues.
Women’s Football Alliance
The Women’s Football Alliance (WFA) is the world’s largest, longest-lasting tackle female professional football league. The WFA began in 2009 with a 96% growth rate from 2011 to 2013. The most significant growth in the league has occurred in the last five years.
Trailblazing has always been the WFA way – they were the first women’s league to be nationally broadcasted on TV and the first female league to play a championship game in an NFL stadium.
Former Women’s Football Alliance players have become NFL coaches. This list includes Katie Sowers, coach for the 49ers and the first woman to coach in the Super Bowl. Jennifer King is a Washington Commander Coach and the first African American female coach in the league.
The League has three divisions and awards like MVP and All American 1st, 2nd, and 3rd teams. There are 14 division 1 pro teams: Alabama Fire, Arlington Impact, Boston Renegades, Cali War, DC Divas, Dallas Elite Mustangs, Detroit Venom, Houston Energy, Mile High Blaze, Minnesota Vixen, Nevada Storm, Pittsburg Passion, St Louis Slam, and Tampa Bay Inferno.
WFA games are nationally broadcast on ESPN3, Root Sports, Eleven Sports, and Comcast. The league runs from April 22nd to June 10th. Game tickets and game schedules can be found here. Not in America? The WFA is international, so check in your local area!
Extreme Football League
The Extreme Football League has a long, eventful history in female professional football leagues. The League has changed names three times: Lingerie Football League, Legends Football League, and now the Extreme Football League (X League).
Gaining inspiration from the Lingerie Bowl, a half-time pay-per-view show during the Super Bowl in the early 2000s. However, one performance a year wasn’t sufficient. It became a full-blown league in 2009 that employs many former NFL players and coaches.
Mike Ditka, and Samantha Gordon own the X League. The 2023 season has not been posted yet – it appears that there may not be more games until 2024. Another possibility is they may return to their league roots and play in the fall. Due to the pandemic, the League also did not have games in 2020 or 2021.
There are currently eight teams: Arizona Red Devils, Atlanta Empire, Austin Sound, Chicago Blitz, Denver Rush, Kansas City Force, Los Angeles Black Storm, and the Seattle Thunder. In the past, the League had an international presence – such as Australia, and Canada.
The X League is a controversial league based on the ladies’ uniform. Many people have criticized their lingerie wear over the years. Women in the X League still want little girls to look at them as role models and for people to see them as more than their bodies in general.
Some women wish they didn’t have to wear scanty outfits to get attention called to women’s football (it’s often the only league any of us know, they aren’t wrong), and the lack of clothing is also a safety issue.
Players have pointed out that their outfits are no smaller than many female sports – like volleyball. A difference is the Extreme League has extremely hard hits – they are tackle and allow the same plays as any other league. A lack of padding makes players more vulnerable to injury, resulting in many injuries.
My hot take on the league? In 2023, every woman should be able to choose their lifestyle, occupation, behavior, etc. and have other individuals respect that. It’s the freedom of choice. If these women want to play this game and are aware of the injury risks, I am all for it. It’s not for me, but it’s not about me. The female professional football league is big enough for everyone.
For all things, X League, check the website here.
Women’s National Football Conference
The Women’s National Football Conference (WNFC) is a tackle female professional football league in its 4th season. Their mission statement is: On a mission to accelerate equity for women and girls in sports through the power of football. We love that!
Adidas recently partnered with WNFC, joining the other impressive partners: Riddell Sports, Commons, United Sports Brands, and DICK’s Sporting Goods. They also have a media deal with Vyre Network to distribute games.
There are 16 teams this season: The Atlanta Phoenix, the Denver Lady Bandits, the Florida Avengers, the Houston Mambas, Kansas City Glory, the Las Vegas Silver Stars, the LA Legends, the Mississippi Panthers, the Oregon Ravens, the Philly Phantomz, the San Diego Rebellion, the Seattle Majestics, the Tennessee Trojans, the Texas Elite Spartans, the Utah Falconz, and the Washington Prodigy. See a team near you?
CBS broadcasts WNFC games. The season runs from April 1st to June 25th, with six regular season games. Visit the website here for schedules, news, and merch through the fan shop – including a cool partnership between WNFC and Los Reyes Sunglasses in honor of National Girls and Women in Sports day.
The Very First Female Professional Football League
The history of the NFL and collegiate football is often overlooked or forgotten, so the herstory of female leagues would be less likely to be known, not on our watch.
The first ever League was in 1939. It’s unclear where the female football phenomenon started or why it disappeared so quickly. It’s memorialized in Life Magazine, so we know it happened, but not the backstory. The literature mostly spoke about how the women played with the same rules their male counterparts did.
There was a minor resurgence in 1941, but after that season, female football pretty much died out – women felt they would leave the head injuries to the boys. It stayed underground until the 1970s.
Female football players in both the 1939 and 1941 teams appeared to be all female softball players. The teams had the same names and players for both sports. Women’s softball was very popular in the 1930s, so the football component was a marketing ploy to garner more publicity and create more ticket sales. It worked! Celebrities would attend games in LA, and crowds would be in the thousands.
The lady athletes found it challenging to juggle both sports professionally, and softball offered more career opportunities. This, and societal pressure, likely contributed to the end of female professional football leagues at that time.
There were naysayers for these early leagues (big surprise). It’s good to see we’ve had pathetic chauvinism since 1939, with male reporters whining that women were taking the last strongholds of masculinity. Cry me a river; somehow, we still have toxic masculinity with insecure Andrew Tates in 2023, so female football didn’t take away your final “stronghold.”
Male doctors wanted to protect women from potential physical damage because hits to the reproductive organs or breasts could cause cancer or internal injury. Oh, thank goodness a male doctor saved the women from themselves – how could a woman possibly make informed decisions about their own body with the medical information at hand? Another thing we seem to be grappling with in 2023.
For more literary masterpieces from yours truly, look here.
